Hallie sat back down beside Bowman, who had been watching the whole thing with undisguised amusement.
What the hell, she thought. She wrapped her arms around him, careful with the shoulder, looked into his eyes, and kissed him long and hard. The troopers gave another cheer, even louder than the first.
PART THREE
Salvation
FORTY-EIGHT
“SO THE NARCOTICS TRAFFICKERS SHOT THE BLACK MAN, AND the big man fell into the water. He might have been shot, too. You’re not sure. But you believe he drowned.” The Homeland Security debriefer glanced down at notes she had been taking. She was a petite woman who’d introduced herself as Rosalind Gurwitz. She had brown hair that framed her face in clusters of natural curls, an apple-cheeked face, and a surprisingly sympathetic, unlawyerly manner. The living, breathing opposite of Rhodes and Rivers.
Hallie thought, No, he did not fall in and he was not shot. I pulled him in. But instead, she nodded and said, as Don Barnard had instructed earlier, “That’s correct.”
Gurwitz, in a navy blue pantsuit, was standing by Hallie’s bedside in the room at Walter Reed. A wallet-sized digital video recorder mounted on a tripod at the foot of the bed was capturing the interview. Barnard, looking official and very directorial in a dark gray three-piece suit, hovered around the room, a glowering presence making sure the debriefer did not overstay her welcome.
“And the drug traffickers who attacked the two men took you prisoner.”
“Yes.”
“And it was when they were taking you back to their camp that you managed to escape.”
“What?” They had given her meds. Her head felt weird, filled with a soft buzzing that would not stop, and thoughts floated around, wispy, hard to grasp. What had Barnard said to say about that?
The lawyer appeared to sense her confusion. She repeated, “The drug traffickers were taking you back to their camp. But you got loose and escaped them. And signaled for the recovery team to pick you up.”
She blinked, rubbed her face, looked at Don Barnard, behind the lawyer. He nodded almost imperceptibly.
“That’s right.”
“How were you able to do that?”
“They were drunk and high on drugs. It wasn’t so hard.”
“Really?” Gurwitz looked at her with admiration and astonishment and, just maybe, a hint of disbelief. “Incredible. No—wrong word. I believe you, of course. It’s just… fantastic.”
“Tell me about it.” Hallie took a sip of ginger ale. She thought the hospital straw with its little flexible joint was one of the funniest things she had ever seen, and laughed out loud.
Rosalind Gurwitz stared.
“Sorry. It’s the meds.” Hallie blinked, grinned.
Hallie looked bad, but the meds were helping. The extraction team had lifted her and Bowman out of the meadow two days earlier. At the Reynosa airfield they’d both been transferred to a government jet. Accompanied by a medical team, they’d flown to Washington and had been airlifted to WRAMC. She and Bowman had been separated then, and she had not seen him since.
The doctors here had sutured the cut in her eyebrow from when Cahner punched her, or maybe when he’d kicked her. There was a stitched cut above her right ear, but she couldn’t recall when that one had happened. One eye was plum-colored and swollen half shut. She had to squint through the other eye, because she had still not fully adjusted to bright surface light, let alone the light in a hospital. That would take several more days. They had also sutured the gash in her left hand, the worst wound of all, requiring twenty stitches. It was wrapped in a sterile bandage. Her back was covered with wine-colored bruises from hitting the microbial mat. She had suffered a mild concussion and had lost nine pounds. But she was alive and, as Barnard had assured her, every BARDA lab and a number of others at the CDC were working with the moonmilk she had retrieved.
“Is there anything you’d like to add to your statement, Dr. Leland?”
“No. But if you’ll turn that off, I have a couple of questions.”
“Of course.” The little red light on the camera winked out.
She tried hard to focus. “First, who were those two paramilitary types working for?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Leland. I don’t have that information.”
Hallie asked several more questions, but it became obvious that Gurwitz either didn’t know or wasn’t going to talk about what had happened in Mexico. Then the lawyer said, “One thing I can address: it appears that you may have been the victim of a very sophisticated subterfuge, Dr. Leland. Dr. Barnard will provide full details. I am authorized to tell you that everything possible will be done to make things right, including full reinstatement with back pay and benefits.”
Barnard cleared his throat.
“Oh, yes. And a promotion as well.”
Barnard looked a degree less disturbed, but he clearly wanted the lawyer gone.
“Have you worked in Washington long, Ms. Gurwitz?” Hallie struggled to focus.
The lawyer frowned, puzzled. “Thirteen years, actually.”
“Ah. Then you understand how much this could cost the government, both in dollars and publicity, not to mention rolling heads.”
Gurwitz turned pale. “Dr. Leland…” she began, then just stopped. She was a good enough lawyer to know when the best thing to say was nothing.
Thinking of that time with Rhodes and Rivers, Hallie let the silence linger, feeling the air in the room getting tighter and tighter, watching Gurwitz suffer. But Hallie took no real pleasure in that. Gurwitz had had nothing to do with any of it. She finished the ginger ale, set the glass aside.
“Why don’t you turn that thing back on.” Hallie nodded at the camera.
Gurwitz hesitated but then touched her remote, and the red light glowed.
“For the record, I’m not going to sue the government. And I have no plans to call the Washington Post or 60 Minutes. Al Cahner was very good at what he did. He fooled some very smart people here. Including me, right up to the end. What’s done is done. Case closed.”
Gurwitz regarded Hallie for a moment longer, appeared to realize that her mouth was hanging open, and closed it. This was clearly not the D.C. denouement she was used to seeing. “That seems like a good place to end our interview. Thank you for your time and cooperation, Dr. Leland.”
She clicked the remote, and the red light winked out. When she had packed up and put her coat on, Gurwitz walked to Hallie’s bedside and touched her shoulder.
“Off the record. You got screwed, honey. I’m not sure I could be as forgiving. But I do admire you for it.” She paused, considering, then continued: “I have no children, but my only nephew is in Afghanistan. We are all in your debt, Dr. Leland.”
Hallie gave the lawyer’s small hand on her shoulder a squeeze. “Thank you. But we don’t have the magic bullet just yet.”
“No, but from everything I’ve been told, we will. Thanks in large part to you. Goodbye—and get better soon.”
When she had gone, Barnard moved close to Hallie’s bed. “Can I get you anything, Hallie? A sandwich? Some ice cream?”
She considered, shook her head. “I’m good. But thanks.”
He nodded, but now, with the lawyer gone, she saw something in his face that pulled her back from the medication haze. “What’s wrong, Don?”
“Some things happened while you were away. I didn’t want to say anything until you’d gotten some rest. But you have a right to know.”
“What?”
He told her about David Lathrop and Lew Casey.
For a few moments she was too stunned to speak. “Dead? Both?”
“Yes. Late’s might have been a robbery gone wrong. We’re not sure about that just yet. Lew’s appeared to be an accident.”
“You don’t believe it.”
“No. He would never have messed up his air-supply connections.”
“I am so sorry, Don. I know you were close to both of them.”
Barnard took in
a long breath, let it out. He started to reach for his pipe, but his hand stopped halfway to the vest pocket and he let it drop. “I was. I’d almost forgotten how much it hurts to lose men like that.” She saw his eyes go vague. A big hand came up, rubbed his chest, fell again. “Good men.” He blinked, came back to the room, rearranged his face. “That was the very bad news. I also have some very good news.”
“Glad to hear it. I can use some of that just now.”
And then, as if he had been listening just outside the door, it opened and in walked Wil Bowman. He wore jeans and running shoes and a long-sleeved tan shirt with the tail out. A slight bulge was visible under the right sleeve just below his shoulder, where they had bandaged the bullet wound. His right arm was in a sling. The loose shirttail made the bandage on the left side of his waist unnoticeable. Other than the loss of a few pounds, Hallie kept thinking, he looked good. Very good. Better than good.
“Hello there,” he said, grinning. She had not seen him look so happy.
“Hello there, yourself. You look pretty good for a man who got shot twice.”
“Amazing powers of recovery. We Colorado boys are tough as nails.” He walked to the bed, picked up the unbandaged hand, closed it within his own. “You don’t look too bad yourself, all things considered.”
Barnard cleared his throat. “I was just telling Hallie about Lew and Late.”
Bowman nodded, his face hardening for a second. “Any movement in the investigations?”
“Not with Late’s killing. But with Lew, possibly. When something like this happens, they look at any anomaly, no matter how small.”
“Sure.”
“Well, we have an unexplained staff absence.”
“Who?” Hallie and Bowman said at the same time.
“Evelyn Flemmer.”
It meant nothing to Bowman, but Hallie’s eyes widened. “Evvie Flemmer? You don’t think she was involved with this, do you?”
“We can’t be sure of anything at this point, of course. But she hasn’t reported for work since Lew died. Agents went to her apartment yesterday, but she wasn’t there.”
“They can get records of all enplanements,” Bowman said.
“Easily. Already done. She did not leave on a plane, train, bus, or rental car. And her personal vehicle was in the lot at her apartment building.”
“My God, Don,” Hallie said. “If you’d asked me to pick the one person at BARDA least likely to be involved with something like that, I would have named Evvie Flemmer.”
“You know what? Me, too,” Barnard said. “And we don’t really know if she was. But it’s the only blip in our operational procedures we’ve detected.”
Hallie remembered the soldiers, their families. “How have containment efforts been working?”
“We’ve just about run through our colistin stockpile. The more cases we find, the faster we have to use it.”
“How many cases reported so far?”
“Almost seven hundred.”
“Mortality rate?”
“Right around ninety percent. A few survivors. But so disfigured…” He shook his head.
“Any other developments?”
“Fox News sniffed out the story. They’ve agreed to embargo it until noon tomorrow. When it breaks…” He shrugged. “Very bad.”
“If we could at least say a new drug works, it might stave off panic.”
“It could.” Barnard nodded. “If we had one.” There was a clock on the wall, but he pulled out his pocket watch. “I need to get back to BARDA, and you need to rest.”
“Don, before you go…”
“Yes?”
“Whatever happened to the people from the COP? The Z point.”
“Fourteen soldiers dead at this point. And three nurses.”
“What about that doctor?”
“She contracted ACE herself. It was a virtual certainty, with her not wearing a biosuit. But she refused. Said she couldn’t treat the soldiers with one on. For five days she was the only physician at the COP. All the others were dealing with battle casualties. That’s a brave woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lenora Stilwell.”
“Say again?”
“Lenora Stilwell. She’s a major with the Florida—”
“I know who she is, Don. Mary’s older sister.”
“Mary who runs the dive shop? Your college friend?”
“My best friend. My God. Don, is Lenora dead?”
“Not yet. Soon, though. She got bad enough that they had to bring her stateside. She’s here at Reed, as a matter of fact.”
“Why would they bring her all this way?”
“Better palliative care, basically. And with an outbreak, you have two options. Contain each cluster individually—put out the small fires. Or aggregate cases. There’s a tipping point after which aggregation becomes safer.”
“Are there others here?”
“About fifty. The worst cases. All in the big iso ward downstairs.”
She yawned, despite herself. Barnard headed for the door.
“I’ll come back tomorrow. I hung a fresh change of clothes in your closet.”
Barnard left, closing the door behind himself, and Hallie and Bowman were alone. The meds were reaching for her, pulling her down, but she would not leave him again.
“How is your arm? And your side?”
He stepped back and took his right arm out of the sling. He snapped off three fast jabs, took a quarter out of his jeans pocket, tossed it in the air, and caught it.
She could do nothing but gape. “How did you do that? I saw your bullet wounds.”
He grinned. “Recall I mentioned that DARPA was working on a way to speed up the body’s healing process? Something called Superheal?”
“Yes. Okay. But why the sling?”
“It’s just for show. DARPA’s not ready to go public with this yet.” He was smiling down at her, eyes alight. He touched her face, just his fingertips, careful of her injuries. “You’re a sight, Doctor.”
“We almost died back there.”
“As close as I’ve ever come.”
“Given what you do, I’d guess that’s saying something.”
“Yes, ma’am. It is. You know, I would have kissed you already except for the bruises. I know love can hurt, but kissing shouldn’t.”
Love? A blossoming in her chest, hot and beautiful.
“Get me some of that fast-healing stuff. Then…”
“Would if I could, believe me. I only got it because…” He trailed off.
“Because?”
“They like to keep me functional.”
“Wil, I have so many questions.”
“You deserve answers. Shoot.”
“Were those paramilitaries working for the same people as Al Cahner?”
“Unclear.”
“Did we find out who Cahner was working for?”
“Possibly. A very shadowy network, multinational, no discernible tracks. But good people are working hard on it right now.”
She yawned again, could feel herself drifting. “I want to hear how you got out. Of the cave. You said you’d tell me later.”
He hesitated, and she saw something behind his eyes, quickly there and gone but sharp enough to wake her up. “What?”
Bowman shifted on his feet, then sat on the edge of her bed. She could tell he was having an internal debate of some kind, and wondered if he had used more DARPA black magic to get himself out. He sighed, pursed his lips, rubbed his face. Made some kind of decision.
“Okay. Cahner shoved me into the river. You know about that.” Shook his head. “I still cannot believe he suckered me so badly.”
“Suckered us. I worked with the man for almost two years, Wil. And he had me fooled completely. You can’t blame yourself for not suspecting him. None of us did. Not even Don Barnard.”
“Yeah. The guy could act, I’ll give him that. So anyway, the river flowed down into a sump for about a hundred yards. There
was some air space in the middle where I got a couple of breaths. Then it spit me out like a watermelon seed into a huge room.”
“But you were still by yourself, without a light, no food…”
“I had a light, thanks to you.” He reached out for her hand, held it gently. “Without that, I was a dead man.”
“So that room you were in reconnected with the main route we had followed the whole time?”
“Well, no.”
“But if not, how did you get out? Were you able to follow some air currents?”
“No.” He rubbed his nose, looked perplexed, more uncertain than she had ever seen him.
“Well, what then?”
“The watercourse had a nice, sandy beach in that big chamber. It looked so inviting. Near drowning can beat you up. I basically passed out.”
“And?”
“And I had the strangest dream.” She stared.
“What kind of dream?”
“There was nothing in it but light. As if I had been awake, seeing this incredible light. Nothing else. Just light.” He shook his head, continued. “By my watch, I slept for a couple of hours.”
“And?”
“When I woke up, I knew how to get out of the cave.”
She stared, open-mouthed.
“Why are you looking at me like that? I know it sounds crazy, but… I got out. So something happened.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the door was still closed. She could see that he was disturbed by the way she was staring at him, as if afraid that she suspected him of lying to cover up for DARPA—or for some other, unsuspected reason. He backtracked: “Look, I’m sorry I said anything. But you have to promise me you won’t mention this to anyone. Okay? Promise?”
She was laughing by then. He frowned. She held up her good hand. “I’m not laughing at you, Wil.” And then she told him: “I got lost. I still don’t know how, but completely lost. I was going to try to relocate the route, but it would have been impossible, really. I needed to rest, first. So I curled up and slept. And I had the same dream. As though I were floating in a cloud of light. And when I woke up… I knew how to get out.”
The Deep Zone Page 35
